GetGlue: Making It Real

January 6, 2011 By Jeremiah Staes 3 Comments

Making it real is the holy grail of making great experiences online. There’s only so much you can do with bits and bites. The magic occurs when you take it from 140 characters to 14, or 140 or 1400 people with a shared experience.

That’s the power of all these conferences, weekly get-togethers like Tweetea, and what I think will be the stratospheric rise of sites like GetGlue.com. Making it real. Because it’s made real, these in-person get togethers are an almost religious experience for some. What is GetGlue.com? It’s a service that helps you find new favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more based on your friends tastes. It also allows you to “check in” when experiencing media, creating a joined social experience, without the uncomfortable (to some) element of a check-in saying where your location is (i.e. Gowalla, Foursquare).

I’m no prognosticator, and I don’t have a list of predictions. But GetGlue.com is blowing up from all appearances for a few key reasons:

1) It makes it dead easy to post Facebook and Twitter updates. People will always look for shortcuts, and since it’s a shared experience, it’s even more powerful. The only suggestion I’d have for them is to automatically include the commonly accepted hashtag for items when you tweet when checking in from the site or your mobile app.

The power tip? The more others use shortcuts, the more original, thoughtful content becomes important and noteworthy.

2) It is a different kind of community of shared knowledge. It gives people something easy to talk about — their interests. Facebook is built around your friends, and GetGlue is built around your topics of interest. It found a different spin on connection. It didn’t try to reinvent Facebook; it’s doing something different.

The power tip? Don’t try to outdo the big dogs in their yard. Setup your own yard and be the big dog there.

3) They “make it real.” When you get 20 stickers, they physically send them in the mail them to you. There are all kinds of possibility for interaction. After all, music promoters will tell you that stickers are a must-have for any artist. But what would make it even better? Give us the option to pay to get badges that people can stitch in. Stickers are easy and cool, but even better if I could sew them on my backpack as badges of honor, which fits in with the quirky internet culture.

The power tip? Build community in a variety of ways, online and off. The web is a merely a tool for the real action… people connecting to each other.

What are your thoughts? Are you stuck on GetGlue?

Filed Under: Business, Foursquare, Location Services, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media, Tips Tagged With: Better online experiences, Get Glue, Making It Real, Social Media, why is getglue gaining traction

The 0.04% Foursquare Question – Is It Worth It?

November 3, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes 6 Comments

The Foursquare elections checkin map gave some very interesting data, and I’m glad they shared it – as it put Foursquare in perspective for me.

Here in Michigan, with a state as large as ours, we had 1713 checkins as of 11:30pm. At first, that sounds great.

But then let’s contrast that with an estimated voter turnout of 3,800,000 Michiganders.

That’s 0.044% of the electorate who checked in. Not even a tenth of a percentage point of Michigan (or any state for that matter – I don’t mean to pick on Michigan, their turnout was better than much of the country) voters checked in. In some states, there were 200 or 300 people, total, who checked in to vote.

This gives me a lot of pause when recommending strategies. Sure, there’s different applications, different markets, people aren’t always political, etc.

But the total number of checkins across the whole state being the same amount as go through one decent-sized polling station?

This raises a LOT of questions in my mind, even though Foursquare is growing fast.

Sure, Foursquare has 2.4 million US users – but let’s look deeper.

If that’s true as an actionable number (something we can use), why is it that only 49,421 (as of 11:30pm election day) people checked in to vote? That means Foursquare voter turnout (within the userbase) would be about 2%. Sure, we’re lackadaisical in our country about voting, but our voter turnout rate (about 37% nationally last mid-term election, so we’ll use that number) is way higher than the foursquare user turnout of 2%.

If Foursquare reflected the country, you’d get a number along the lines of 37% of the total (which is the midterm election turnout last time around), which would then be represented in about 888,000 checkins across the country. Let’s give Foursquare the benefit of the doubt and base it off of young voter turnout – some estimate that between 20%-24% depending on who you talk to. Still, the numbers aren’t adding up – after all, not all foursquare users are under 30.

There’s just something not right;  you’d think with how much the social media crowd talked about check-ins and Foursquare it’d be something of major importance you might need to throw major resources at – but the numbers show that is not true, at least right now.

Don’t get me wrong - location as a concept is very important, and will become more so. But I’m starting to think it won’t be in the context of the check-in, but in the enhanced delivery of information or in other ways.

Filed Under: Business, Location Services, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media Tagged With: foursquare, hype, location, location services, michigan election, Social Media

Cold Calling Has Gone.. Cold

May 12, 2010 By David Lingholm 2 Comments

Every time a prognosticator predicts the death of a business practice, my skin crawls. Few things in business rarely die out, they merely become less effective. For example, if you listen to the mainstream media gurus the newspaper industry should have imploded by now. Certainly it is not a healthy industry, yet it is a resilient industry that is learning on the fly how to remain relevant and profitable in a digital media age.

So I will not be predicting the death of the cold call, however I believe it will soon be on life support. Some sales people claim to enjoy cold calling and will feel naked without it in their tool belt. Some companies have thrived by smilin’ and dialin’, so they will resist any change to their core business. There will always be one-call close sales environments and that will always encourage one-call close prospecting techniques. For these reasons, cold calling will not die. It will merely go the way of the horse and buggy. People still wax poetically about how great life was when this was our primary means of transportation until they actually ride in one

My prediction is based on these three factors:

  1. The cost of customer acquisition by cold calling
  2. The adoption of Do-Not-Call lists
  3. The growing popularity of social media outlets

Factor #1: The Cost of Customer Acquisition by Cold Calling

The internet marketing firm Hubspot released their report The State of Inbound Marketing 2010 this past February and it should be an eye opener for those who cling to their old prospecting measures. On page four of the report, respondents who relied on outbound lead generation (call centers, etc.) stated that their average cost per lead was $332. This compares to the $134 per lead paid by the firms who rely on inbound lead generation.

Factor #2: The Adoption of Do-Not-Call Lists

Do-Not-Call lists have been adopted in much of the industrialized world. In the US, the list only applies to individual consumers, allowing businesses to call other businesses with little regulation. For every phone number in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission claims that approximately 30 percent of those numbers are registered with the on the federal call list. This leaves almost one-third of the potential calling universe off your prospect list.

Costs have risen quickly because of this list. Calls must be scrubbed against the list to ensure calls are not made to consumers on the registry. Transgressions can cost up to $10,000 per occurrence with no limit. Just ask Direct TV ($5.3 million fine), Craftmatic Industries ($4.4 million) and ADT Security Services ($2 million) how these fines can impact your bottom line. The fines also trickle down to the individual telemarketer and can cost the individual more than they earn in a year.

Factor #3: The Growing Popularity of Social Media Outlets

On The Nielson Company blog, it indicates that there were over 124 million unique visitors to social media websites in December of 2010. Both Facebook and Twitter have more than doubled their unique users in the past year. This is much faster than the growth rate of things that are now omnipresent, like telephones, televisions and the internet. Very quickly, Americans are drifting away from talking on the phone to communicating online. It is now easy to talk through the internet with your family and friends while ignoring the pleas of the cold caller.

People want a different experience from companies. They want to engage with you or with your company directly. They will ask extended friends for advice. They will not pick up your unsolicited phone call. They will not return your cleverly crafted voicemail message. They will call you when they are ready. When they reach out to you, will they get a busy signal because you are trying to cold call? Or will they hear a friendly voice that they trust because you have already interacted with them on their terms? The choice is yours.

Filed Under: Business, Industry News, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Tips Tagged With: cold calling, customer acquisition cost, do not call list

Blinders

January 14, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes 1 Comment

I don’t normally write my blog entries aimed for other social media professionals. After all, there’s a lot of knowledge out there – I aim to distill things to my audience, which I know is more executive and marketing related but not necessarily in the digital space. If a fellow SMP gets value, awesome, and I welcome you – but my reader base generally isn’t you.

But this post, I’m going to address you, fellow Social Media Professionals, and hopefully give value to my typical reader.

Take Off The Blinders.

horseblinders

I’m noticing some things falling through the cracks – people hyping different things as if it were the second coming of Steve Jobs, but at the end of the day, not producing desired results. It’s almost as if many SMPs out there have decided that social media can do no wrong, and that THE way to do it is the way they and their techno-elite friends do it (by the way, I’m one of those technophiles, for sure).

But your target market, unless you’re selling tech to early adopters, probably has no idea what FriendFeed is. I explain Foursquare at least once a week. The value isn’t evident. There’s a reason way more people use Farmville than Twitter.

Non-techies get the point of Farmville, even though it’s much more complicated of an interface.

Because it’s not about the interface, it’s about the value proposition.

More people see value in having a fake farm than Tweeting.

Think about this.

Done? Next.

It Seems The Internet and Social Marketing Pros Have A Problem.

I recently saw a post that was all about how “Lands’ End isn’t visible.” Blinders completely. As of this writing Land’s End has 250,000+ Facebook fans and quite honestly a different demographic than Zappos, with 29k or so. Yah. 29k. On Facebook, at least, Lands’ End has almost NINE TIMES more fans than Zappos.

It just isn’t the social media elite demographic, highlighted out of the valley, so it was missed. But it was still in the minds of people. It’s humming along selling stuff. It’s popular. Obviously, raw fan numbers are not your only metric of success, but a lot of people have been missing the boat.

Seem as if we as a group don’t use it or it’s not OUR work flow or in our frame of “cool” visibility, we (royal we) denigrate and talk about how others “don’t get it” or it’s a “poor choice.”

You know what? I know success on the oft-maligned MySpace in certain situations.

I’ve worked with blogs who get tens of thousands of unique visitors but few comments – but high conversions. Most of the time, readers in non-SM circles call blog posts “articles.” I’ve seen it time and time and time again.

I know people who get 5,000+ word diatribes from other “experts,” but, although their blog isn’t designed to my aesthetic taste, it works for them apparently and gets them business. Bravo to her. I’m not her target market anyway. If I were, it’d be designed differently.

One of the biggest indie musicians’ sites is the definition of basic – but because he covers so many bases contentwise that countless zoom-bang flash sites do not, including showcasing his awesome – it helped him get relatively huge and make a real career sans label.

Or the pervasive myth that content has to be short at all times – sure, short content is great – but why are the biggest podcasts around long-form, sometimes easily exceeding an hour long? Because they’re good. It takes skill to be good for a whole hour or longer, regularly. And that’s why the previous example is making millions of dollars and in this next linked case have plenty of listeners and a loyal following.

A Parting Thought

I’ve always been fascinated behind the real reasons and incentives why things happen, as opposed to the hype of them. Many times, while one hand is dealing the cards, the other is distracting you from the real “magic” that’s happening.

What are the non-sexy methods that you find that work? What about newer tools and techniques that you’ve found make it happen for your strategy?

Filed Under: Advertising, blogging, Business, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Rant, Social Media, Tips, Web Sites Tagged With: blinders, facebook, farmville, land's end, myspace, rss, rss is dead, Social Media, social media professionals, Twitter, zappos

One click, Two clicks, Three clicks, Foursquare!

January 8, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

fswebsotTwo musings or tips for today. Some others have mentioned them as rules very kindly online, others have said they like’em – I don’t like to say “rules” but here’s how I operate.

Foursquare is a social tool.

It’s a social tool. I know I’ve violated this rule of thumb, but I don’t check in unless I want you to know I’m there. That means I don’t check in at gas stations, I’m not gonna check in at the shopping market, unless of course, I’m open to you meeting me there. The other night, multiple people lit up my foursquare with notifications all night long – with mom’s house. Gas stations. Everything. I realized that if MY notifications went that crazy and got annoying, it must be for other people. It’s actually not the post to Twitter that’s overwhelming for me, as it’s a flood of things anyway. But notifications, they interrupt. And thing is, I don’t want to turn them off because sometimes it’s useful.

Yah, I’ve been an offender. My bad. Will try to do better next time. I just don’t think you should get a “crunked” badge for checking in at the coffeeshop. Or for buying eggs. I’ve not ever gotten smashed on eggs.

Three clicks, and you’re out.

Part deux of my missive is websites who feel they need to bury their stuff down a rathole 4, 5, or 8 clicks down. The most excellent Bobby Mercader had a tweet pointing to SEO roundtable – for SEO, don’t make users go more than 5 clicks down. Well, SEO is nice, but frankly, I’m very concerned with the user experience.

Three clicks is the charm – One click, two click, BUY (or take desired action).

If you don’t know what desired action you want people to do on your site, then let’s not even talk about social media and review your conversion process. It’s a real shame when someone’s built thousands of fans and not one buys because your basics aren’t covered. I see it every single week, it’s a real problem and businesses, get your fundamentals down. I know social media is new and shiny and important, but fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, or the rest won’t work. Did I say fundamentals? Yah, I’ll say it again. Fundamentals.

Filed Under: Business, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media, Tips, Web Sites
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